HYDERABAD: Twelve per cent Goods and Service Tax (GST) on sanitary napkins has forced women mainly from low-income groups to switch back to use cloth during their menstruation cycle.
The tax has further slowed down the expansion of the state government menstrual hygiene scheme and the operations of Non-Governmental Organisations providing sanitary napkins to school girls.
“I switched to cloth after July but found it uncomfortable to use when working,” said Uma (name changed), a domestic help in Begumpet. The family of three moved to Hyderabad from Mahabubnagar eight years ago and have been living in Hyderabad with an income of `16,000 a month. Uma had stopped using cloth and started using sanitary napkins a few years ago but she bleeds for 11 days on an average every month. “I used to buy a pack for `36 XL napkins. But as that has become expensive, I switched to the regular-sized napkin that now costs `40 a pack. It is the cheapest I can get and not comfortable,” she added.
If women of low income groups are put at an inconvenience due to the tax impact, the state government’s plans too have gone off track. In 2015, Kadiyam Srihari, deputy chief minister, and education minister had announced that the state government would supply school girls with free sanitary napkins. Incinerators to shred the pads after use was also part of the minister’s promise.
The scheme was to be implemented across the state within two years but was delayed due to quality reasons. “Over 70 per cent of the women in the state are living in rural areas and most have little or no access to sanitary napkins even today. It should be a zero tax item,” said G Srinivasa Rao, chief programme officer, Health and Family Welfare Department.
Harika E provides sanitary napkins to over 1,000 school girls from low income family on the outskirts of the city. She does the service through her NGO, Anarghya with a fixed budget. Pre-GST, she paid only 11 per cent tax on the sanitary napkins procured from Puducherry. “Now there is an additional five per cent tax on the transportation, so I have to shell out in total six per cent more as taxes,”said Harika. “ The school girls will eventually go back to using cloth, which is unhygienic,” she added.